No Tea For Me 

Nugent supporters;

It was only a matter of time before conservative media rallied behind National Rifle Association board member Ted Nugent. In the space of a few days, he has garnered support from CNN contributor Dana Loesch, Fox News host Mike Huckabee, and frequent Fox guest Lars Larson,

On the August 24 edition of Fox News' Hannity & Colmes, co-host Sean Hannity aired video footage of musician and right-wing activist Ted Nugent at an August 21 concert calling Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) a "piece of sh$#" and referring to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) as a "worthless b*&^%$." In the video clip, Nugent holds up what appear to be two assault rifles and says he told Obama "to suck on my machine gun" and says he told Clinton "you might want to ride one of these into the sunset." After airing the clip, Hannity referred to Nugent as a "friend and frequent guest on the program

Mitt Romney actively sought, and won, Ted Nugent’s endorsement in early March. According to a report in the Texas Tribune and Nugent himself, the two had a lengthy conversation about gun laws and the endorsement on March 2nd.

Rocker Courtney Love claims she gave Nugent a blowjob when she was 12 years old.

Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) blasted President Obama following his proposed “crackdown” on firms found to be manipulating the oil market, saying he is “waving a tar baby in the air” as a distraction from high gas prices.

“This is just about waving a tar baby in the air and saying that something else is a problem,” Bachmann said in an interview Wednesday with The Shark Tank, a conservative news organization that covers Florida politics. “I have never seen a more irresponsible president who is infantile in the way that he continually blames everyone else for his failure to first diagnose the problem and second to address the problem. It’s always everyone else’s fault.”

Here in the United States, those who self-identify as religious tend to be exactly the opposite of their British counterparts when it comes to politics. As the Pew Research Center recently discovered, "Most people who agree with the religious right also support the Tea Party" and its ultra-conservative economic agenda. Summing up the situation, scholar Gregory Paul wrote in the Washington Post that many religious Christians in America simply ignore the Word and "proudly proclaim that the creator of the universe favors free wheeling, deregulated union busting, minimal taxes, especially for wealthy investors, and plutocrat-boosting capitalism as the ideal earthly scheme for his human creations."

The good news is that this may be starting to change. In recent years, for instance, Pew has found that younger evangelicals are less devoutly committed to the Republican Party and its Tea Party-inspired agenda than older evangelicals. Additionally, surveys show a near majority of evangelicals agree with liberals that the tax system is unfair and that the wealthy aren't paying their fair share. Meanwhile, the organization Faith in Public LIfe has highlighted new academic research showing that even in America there is growing "correlation between increased Bible reading and support for progressive views, including abolishing the death penalty, seeking economic justice, and reducing material consumption."

Of course, many Americans who cite Christianity to justify their economic conservatism may not have actually read the Bible. In that sense, religion has become more of a superficial brand rather than a distinct catechism, and brands can be easily manipulated by self-serving partisans and demagogues. To know that is to read the Sermon on the Mount and then marvel at how anyone still justifies right-wing beliefs by invoking Jesus.

I can't believe the stupidity of the right. Do they not spend at least two minutes researching what they spew on here? Crap this one was debunked over 4 years ago and some Floridian idiots still believe it. I Guess there will be no end to FloridDUH.

THE POST:
Quoting NumberWise:
The article in your header says, "The 1974 Budget Act says that, as a matter of law, the Senate Budget Committee is to pass a resolution by April 1 and Congress as a whole to pass one by April 15." So, if this is a law, are there no consequences for breaking the law?

When the law makers break their own laws which they make for themselves, there is no one but voters that can make then accountable except the voters. It is like when Obama was running for president, many people pointed out that based on his associations and other reasons, he probably could not have gotten top secret security clearances from the FBI. But we the American people gave him the ultimate security clearance by our votes. Elections have consequences.


THE FACTS

The truth fades into the background

A chain e-mail has been burning up the Internet with the allegation that Sen. Barack Obama is not eligible for FBI or Secret Service jobs because of his acquaintance with former antiwar radical William Ayers.

The implication is that anyone who wouldn't qualify for a federal law enforcement job has no business as commander in chief of the U.S. armed forces.

One version of the e-mail we received on Oct. 10, 2008, had the subject heading, "FW: unbelievable food for thought."

"Just passing along info that came to me," it began. "This is something to think about no matter what other concerns may be on your plate. If Barack Obama would apply for a job with the FBI or with the Secret Service, he would be disqualified because of his past associations with William Ayers, a known (and unrepentant) terrorist. If elected President, he would not qualify to be his own body guard!"

It's worth noting that the president, no matter who he or she may be, automatically gets access to any classified information, and in fact has the authority to decide who else in the government gets access to it. Just by virtue of having been elected to the U.S. Senate, Obama already has access to a great deal of secret intelligence information.

Still, that says little about how Obama would fare in a background check, since none is required for either job.

An FBI spokesman said the bureau would not comment on whether any individual would pass a background check, and the Secret Service did not return numerous calls on the matter. So we asked outside experts whether Ayers would pose a problem for Obama.

Ayers was a founder in 1969 of the violent antiwar group the Weathermen, which took responsibility for at least 12 bombings between 1970 and 1974. A pipe bomb attributed to the group killed a police officer and severely injured another in 1970, and three of the group's own members were killed in a 1970 explosion in a Greenwich Village townhouse in which they were making bombs. Ayers was investigated in connection with the group's activities, but the charges were dropped in 1974 due to prosecutorial misconduct. He emerged from hiding, earned a doctorate in education from Columbia University, and is now a professor of education at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Like Obama, he lives on the South Side of Chicago.

Obama and Ayers are both active in politics and civic life in the city. They both volunteered at two different charities, the Woods Foundation and the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, and Ayers hosted a small gathering for Obama and then-state Sen. Alice Palmer in 1995 as Obama planned to run for the seat Palmer was vacating.

Were Obama to apply to the FBI, he would have to fill out Standard Form 86, a background-investigation form used by the entire U.S. intelligence community. The more detailed iterations of the Internet rumor allege Obama would have to disclose his past connections to Ayers on the form, particularly in a section titled "Association Record." It asks seven questions along the lines of these two:

"Have you EVER been an officer or a member of, or made a contribution to, an organization dedicated to the use of violence or force to overthrow the U.S. Government...?"

The Secret Service did not return our calls for comment about the agency's application procedures, but its Web site indicates that applicants must fill out a modified version of the form called the SF-86A, which asks: "Are you now or have you ever been a member of any foreign or domestic organization, association, movement, group, or combination of persons which is totalitarian, fascist, communist, or subversive; or which has adopted or shows a policy advocating or approving the commission of force or violence to deny other persons their rights under the Constitution of the United States, or which seems [sic] to alter the form of government of the United States by unconstitutional means?"

Note that the agencies ask whether the applicant himself has engaged in this behavior – not whether the applicant knows anyone who has. Ayers' militant activity occurred in the '60s and '70s, when Obama was a child. Even Obama's harshest critics do not allege he had anything to do with them.

So there is no reason to believe Obama would have to disclose his relationship to Ayers, experts said.

"There is nowhere on the form that Obama's relationship to Ayers as it exists or existed would even come up," said Mark Zaid, a Washington attorney who specializes in security-clearance work. "It would never come up unless somebody mentioned it during a background investigation."

Moreover, even if it did come up, there's no reason to believe it would impede Obama's hiring, Zaid said. "Given what has been said publicly about their relationship, I can't fathom that it would ever get more than a moment's attention," he said.

A second lawyer specializing in security clearances, Elizabeth Newman of the Washington, D.C., firm Kalijarvi, Chuzi & Newman, concurred that the Ayers connection would pose no problem for Obama, even if it did come to the attention of the investigators.

"They would care if there was a recent relationship with someone who is currently on trial or currently considered to be advocating violent overthrow of the government," she said. "But not something that was 20 or 30 years ago."

A third security-clearance lawyer, Mark Riley of Odenton, Md., who is also a retired Army intelligence officer, was slightly less dismissive of the Ayers issue, saying it was "something they would investigate."

But Riley leaned toward the conclusion that the Ayers connection would not cost Obama a security clearance. "The issue is what is Obama's relationship with him in his adult life," Riley said. "If he didn't have one, other than they sat on a board and maybe had the same political causes, that's not enough to deny a fellow a clearance."

So all three of the attorneys we contacted agreed unequivocally that Obama's relationship with Ayers would not be an automatic disqualifier, as the claim suggests.

In fact, Zaid said someone with Obama's record – a law degree from Harvard, teaching experience at the University of Chicago Law School – would be an excellent candidate.

"The agencies would be fighting over him," Zaid said. "As an outright claim, this statement is false."

We agree. It's False.